Tenth European Individual Chess Championship in Budva

3/13/2009 – The Mediterranean coastal town in Montenegro is just a stone's throw away from the venue of the Fischer-Spassky revenge match of 1992. The eleven-round Swiss event with 306 players has a prize fund of 120,000 Euros, with 22 places in the next World Cup at stake. After seven rounds Ukrainian GM Andrei Volokitin is in the sole lead. A 12-year-old is doing fine too. Big illustrated report.

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This tournament is being organised by the Montenegro Chess Federation, the
City of Budva and the European Chess Union. It is taking place in Budva, Montenegro,
in the Congress Hall of the “Splendid Spa & Resort Hotel”. The
event is an 11-round Swiss, with a playing rate of 90 minutes for 40 moves,
then 30 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per
move, starting from move one.

The total prize fund of the Individual European Championship is 120,000 Euros.
First prize is € 15,000, second is € 12,000, third € 10,000
up to 25th prize, which is € 1,000. According to Montenegro law all
prizes are taxable (maximum 10%). The first 22 players will in addition qualify
for the World Cup.

Budva,
Montenegro

Budva is a coastal town in Montenegro, well known for its sandy beaches, diverse
nightlife, and beautiful examples of Mediterranean architecture. Budva is 2,500
years old, which makes it one of the oldest settlements on the Adriatic sea
coast. The woodcut on the right shows the old town in 1615. Today its population
is around 15,000.

Budva has become popular amongst European tourists because of its beaches and
its Mediterranean climate, with warm summers and mild winters. The area enjoys
230 sunny days in a year, and Budva claims to be among the warmest Mediterranean
towns with an average temperature of 8°C in January and 27.9°C in July.
The temperature of the sea reaches up to 24.7°C in the summer months, while
it keeps between 18°C and 19°C in the autumn. We assume that the bravest
of the players in the European Championship will be taking dips in the Mediterranean
Sea.

You may be interested to know that the town is located just a few miles from
Sveti Stefan, where Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky played their return match
in 1992.

The venetian walls of Budva as depicted in a 1900 postcard

Budva today [photo Bratislav Tabaš]

The Hotel Splendid Conference & SPA Center, where the Championship is
being held

Is the sea still too cold? The indoor pool area of Hotel Splendid is a fine
alternative

Round seven of the tournament saw an important victory by Andrei Volokitin
over the previous leader Ernesto Inarkiev of Russia. That put the Ukrainian
GM into first place with 6.0/7 points, followed by nine players with 5.5 points
each. Behind them is a group of 23 players with 5.0 points.

A scene from the opening ceremony in of the European Championship in Budva

The playing hall in the Splendid Hotel

Historical pictures decorate the walls of the playing venue

An arial view of the action

Can you identify the spectator in this picture?

Did anyone ever claim that chess was a easy game?

Analysis after the game

Andrei Volokitin at the start of his sixth round game

A familiar face and old friend: Dutch chess legend Jan Timman

12-year-old Ukrainian IM Illya Nyzhnyk, rated 2503, one of the stars of the
event.

In April 2008 Nyzhnyk scored his first GM norm, in September, at the age of
12, he won the European Youth Chess Championship for under 16. In December 2008
he finished 12th in the Ukrainian championship, with a performance rating of
2594, barely under the 2600 performance required for another GM norm. Take a
look at what he did, with the black pieces, to a 2621 GM in round four in Budva:

See also

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See also

12/6/2017 – Imagine this: you tell a computer system how the pieces move — nothing more. Then you tell it to learn to play the game. And a day later — yes, just 24 hours — it has figured it out to the level that beats the strongest programs in the world convincingly! DeepMind, the company that recently created the strongest Go program in the world, turned its attention to chess, and came up with this spectacular result.

Video

On this 60 mins video we are going to concentrate on a simple, very solid idea in the main line Scandinavian, which even Magnus Carlsen has used to win games. Black focusses on making his life easy in the opening and forces White to work very hard to get advantage – but it is doubtful if White can get an advantage. Club players are always on the lookout for effective, time-saving solutions and here we have just that. Accompany FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin on this 60 mins video. You can learn a new opening system in 60 mins and start to play it with confidence on the very same day!